Eleven
HARVEST WAS OVER. Elisud couldn’t believe how relieved he felt once the last of the wheat was stored in the grainhouse, joining the basket of oats, wild fruits and nuts. He’d never seen so much food in all his life, yet knew that with twenty-four mouths to feed – possibly twenty-five by early next year, since Sewena’s waist was rapidly thickening – it wouldn’t last long.
Such thoughts were not to be considered now, though. Now was the time for taking stock and preparing for the long cold that was rapidly approaching. For collecting fallen wood, chopping down trees and stacking the logs somewhere dry. For ensuring every house had a watertight roof, that none had been weakened by small creatures making their homes where they weren’t wanted. There were also the animals to be brought home to their enclosures, checked over and the weakest ones marked for slaughter over the upcoming moons.
Then, just as the women started talking about how best to celebrate First Frost and give thanks for such a bountiful harvest, the wandering Pedar finally returned to the farm. He came with a roebuck carcass slung across the back of a sturdy pony, with hares strung on either side, and grouse hanging from his pack.
He wasn’t the man Elisud had been expecting. Over the last season-and-a-half spent amongst the family he’d heard many tales of Rosen’s absent husband. A nice man, kind, quiet and a little dreamy, it was no wonder he rarely chose to spend time with his sharp-tongued wife. A wanderer, a traveller, he was also the best huntsman in this part of Dumnonia, and never came home empty-handed. He was adored by his nieces and nephews for the stories he could tell, and was never short on smiles for everyone.
There was no sign of that man as Pedar returned one sodden afternoon, tramping in through the gates and standing silently by while the family rushed around him, unpacking the pony, flinging questions at him and not waiting for answers. Four hounds slunk in on his heels, looking worn and exhausted. Weariness sat on Pedar’s slumped shoulders too, and there was no sign of a smile on his drawn face. He looked ill, Elisud thought, watching from the doorway of his house as the rest of the family welcomed their strayed lamb back into the fold.
“He’s so sad,” Ceri murmured, holding onto her father’s hand, uncertain of this latest stranger. “As sad as Mairo used to be.”
“Getting caught out in the rain often makes people sad, puffin,” Elisud reassured her, but couldn’t deny that she had a point. Pedar didn’t just look unhappy about the rain, he looked lost, broken. Shaking his head, Elisud warned himself not to be foolish and shooed Ceri back into the house and away from the rain, while watching Rosen approach her husband.
Arms wrapped tight across her middle, her expression far from friendly, the woman said something short and curt. Pedar didn’t even look at her, just nodded, his head hanging low.
When Ruan tugged the rope from his unresisting hand to lead the pony away, Pedar suddenly looked up, head turning as he searched the soaked scene. His eyes passed over Elisud, then shot back, wide with surprise, the start of a smile on his lips. Until he met Elisud’s gaze and frowned, his shoulders slumping even lower.
Rosen said something sharp and he nodded again, turning his head the other way. Catching sight of Briallen watching everything from Dama Wynn’s doorway, he took a step towards her.
Rosen’s hand shot out to take a firm hold on his arm. When Pedar frowned, she nodded at their own house. The man gave a full-bodied sigh and nodded, finally following his wife home. Slowly, the farmyard emptied of life as everyone scurried back out of the rain.
Elisud remained in his own doorway, thinking back over the scene he’d just witnessed and wondering what it all might mean. When he looked up, his eyes met Briallen’s as she also lingered. He was too far away to read the expression in her eyes, but he saw the way she held her arms across her middle; tight and defensive, as though holding back her emotions or protecting herself from fresh pain.
Pedar’s return must have stirred up difficult memories for her. This was the man who’d brought her husband’s body home strapped over a pony, in much the same way the roebuck had been. It had been in Pedar’s company that Mewan had died, and if rumours were to be believed, in Pedar’s company the fool had preferred to live.
Elisud couldn’t even begin to guess what thoughts were running through her mind on seeing Pedar again. All he wanted was to reach out and hold her, much the same way he would comfort Ceri when she was hurt or confused.
But he didn’t. It wasn’t his place to hold or comfort her. He didn’t have that right. So he just stayed in his doorway and she remained in hers, while rain fell in grey sheets between them, sad memories flooding the miserable day.
PEDAR WAS BACK. Well, of course he was. It was mid-autumn, the best hunting season; he always returned at this time. After bringing his latest catch home, he would gather the men, now freed from the harvest, and take them hunting for enough meat to see them all through winter and into spring. Pedar always returned at this time of year, so why had she felt so surprised when he’d walked out of the rain that morning?
“That boy looks bad,” Sira Wynn murmured, stirring up the fire as Briallen finally moved back inside now that the excitement was over.
“The thought of Rosen’s tongue can do that to any man,” Dama Wynn replied with a stern sniff. For all that Rosen was Dama’s daughter, the pair of them rarely saw eye-to-eye – they were both too strong-willed and stubborn for that. “Not that I blame her, mind, when he’s so quick to wander. Always has, as I warned her he always would – but she would have none but him.”
Sira Wynn gave one of his noncommittal hums. “I was starting to think he wouldn’t return.” His eyes flicked to Briallen, but she didn’t understand why.
“Sad and bad, sad and bad,” Dama muttered in an unusually obscure way. “These men these days. I’ll never understand them.”
Sira Wynn gave a soft snort. “It would be a dull world if the gods made us all the same, hwegoll.”
The endearment made Briallen blink, unable to believe anyone could even think Dama Wynn was delightful or sweet, let alone say it to her face.
The old woman just chuckled and threw a glance towards her husband that spoke of long ago days when they had both been young – impossible to imagine looking at the pair of them now. “Certain sure, that it would, melder.”
Already shaken from seeing Pedar so unexpectedly returned, Briallen’s head couldn’t cope with an affectionate Dama Wynn, so she grabbed her spinning basket from beside her bed. “Since this rain seems here to stay, I thought I’d go set Ceri at her spinning.”
“She needs the practise, certain sure,” Dama agreed, her tone as gruff and grumpy as it had always been. “Nice child, but lazy if you let her be. Go make the most of the rain, mowes.”
Amused at being called a girl herself when she was on her way to instruct an almost six-year-old, Briallen pulled on her cloak, made sure her basket was protected from the rain, and ran the short distance from one house to another. One was the place she slept, the other was where she’d once dreamed – and hoped she might dream again. But not today.
No, today she needed the simple process of spinning, surrounded by those she cared for. Ones who could soothe her unsettled heart just by being there. Ones who could take her mind off the man who’d brought her husband’s lifeless body home less than a year ago on a rainy day such as this. A man whose face still bore the weight and loss of such a thing.
For in that one moment when Pedar’s eyes had met hers, she’d felt such a fierce surge of grief over Mewan that it had taken her until now to realise it wasn’t her pain she was feeling: it was Pedar’s.
Her own grief had faded over recent moons, almost as if it had bled away with her lost baby, somehow healing her at the same time. It wasn’t her fault her baby had gone, and it wasn’t her fault her husband had died. She could no more have kept him at home with her, than she could have stopped her failed babe from leaving her womb. But one look into the other man’s eyes had brought
a shadow of it all back. For Pedar the pain was obviously still real, still close, and it made her thoughtful.
So while she smiled at Elisud and chuckled over Ceri’s protesting moans as she set the girl’s spindle spinning, her mind turned over the strange nature of love and marriage. The answers surprised her, mixed in with a fair dose of both relief and sadness. Poor Pedar.
“Are you well?” Elisud asked, his voice as soft as a kiss. Ceri was too absorbed in her spinning to notice what the adults were doing.
Briallen looked up at him, this man she wished could be hers and was beginning to hope truly might be one day, and smiled. “Yes.” She was fine, especially now that she realised Mewan had never really been hers to have or lose. “Yes, I am well.”
Elisud’s own smile was full of relief and his hand rose as if to cup her cheek, perhaps to hold her still for a kiss. Briallen’s eyelids drooped, waiting breathlessly for the contact she longed for.
“No, no, no!” Ceri cried, stamping her feet.
Elisud drew back and Briallen turned her head, both of them startled into taking a step back from the other. They needn’t have worried – Ceri was too busy jumping up and down on the floor, her yarn unravelling about her feet, to care about them.
Biting her lip against a laugh, Briallen stole a sideways glance at Elisud and he winked. They both grinned, a little flushed, slightly embarrassed and perhaps even a bit shy.
“Looks like you’ve got your hands full here,” he murmured. “I think I’ll go look for Demairo.” Unsurprisingly, the boy was off in the woods somewhere. He usually was whenever he got the chance, regardless of the weather. Instructing his daughter to be good, Elisud slipped away.
Which left Briallen free to calm Ceri down, rescue her loose yarn from the floor and retrieve the girl’s fleece from where it had been thrown perilously close to the fire. Then she sat Ceri down, gave her a stern talking to and set her to spinning again.
Her own head full of tangled thoughts, Briallen sat down too and pinched some fleece between her fingers, wishing she could spin her own life into so neat and tight a thread as the one that curled and clung together above her whirling spindle.
If only it was as simple as catching herself before she started spinning the other way to stop her life from unravelling about her feet. And yet, as Briallen did exactly that with her spindle and wound the fresh yarn on, before setting it in motion again, she couldn’t deny that sometimes the yarn formed after an unsuccessful unravelling was the neatest and tightest of all.
“Oh, oh, oh! Aunt Bria, help!” Ceri’s yelp had Briallen pinching her thread to a stop before she leant forward to rescue the girl from a fresh disaster of her own.
“Steady, Ceri,” Briallen soothed, helping her wind her yarn onto her spindle, before setting it spinning again. “Why are you always in such a rush?”
“Because if I don’t hurry, everything I want will be gone,” came the serious reply. “Nothing and no one lasts forever.”
Briallen’s heart caught in her throat, wondering what hard turns had taught this girl such a lesson so early in life. She ran a hand over Ceri’s soft brown curls. “But if you’re always in a hurry, keresik, you’ll never have time to appreciate what you already have.”
Not taking her eyes from Briallen’s, Ceri reached out and caught her spindle before it could reverse its spin. Then her eyes widened as she realised what she’d done. “I did it,” she breathed.
Briallen smiled. “You did.”
“Just like you or Aunt Wena. I did it. I really did it! And I wasn’t even watching. I felt it stopping.”
Quickly winding her own spinning up and putting it safely aside, Briallen lunged for Ceri’s. Not a moment too soon as the girl forgot all about her yarn, dropping her fleece and spindle to dance around, crowing over her success.
“I’m a proper spinner now!” she sang in a ready trill, which made up for its wavering weakness with volume and enthusiasm. “I’ll never unravel again!”
Tucking Ceri’s spinning away, Briallen allowed her hands to be seized and the pair of them danced around the house, laughing and singing.
“I’m a proper spinner now!” Briallen sang loudly, swinging Ceri around fast and hard so that her feet came off the floor, making the girl squeal with delight. “And I’ll never unravel aga– Oof!”
Ceri shrieked as Briallen hit something solid and lost her grip on the girl, sending her tumbling over the floor to land at Demairo’s feet. Meanwhile Briallen, still breathless from her collision, looked up at Elisud. He’d caught her firmly in his arms, making her heart pound in a new way.
“Never unravel again?” he murmured, lips twitching with amusement. It was true, Briallen realised, because she’d already unravelled, completely and utterly, at this man’s feet. She only hoped he had the skills to pick her up and set her spinning in the right direction again.
“Da! Da! I did it! I caught my spindle without even watching, just like Aunt Wena used to. Like a proper spinner!”
Elisud’s arms tightened around Briallen as if he wasn’t going to let go. Their eyes locked. She didn’t know what he saw in hers, but as his daughter continued clamouring for his attention, he gave a rueful smile, relaxed his hold and turned to scoop up Ceri instead.
“Did you, puffin?” he said, bouncing her to make her giggle. “Show me.”
Ceri’s eyes went wide with dismay. “Oh no!” Wriggling to get down, she ran back to the fire and found her spinning neatly wound on and held in place. After running her little fingers over the yarn, checking it was still tight, she beamed. “Thank you, Aunt Bria!” Throwing herself into Briallen’s arms, she hugged her around the waist. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Briallen could only hug the girl back and laugh with the others. And when she caught the way Elisud watched her with his daughter, his expression full of affection, it felt like the first tug on her unravelled self. She wasn’t spinning the right way yet, but there was hope that one day soon she just might be.